Those who know me also know about my obsession with Dream Theater. I even met them personally on April 11th, 2000. For this reason, I think it would be interesting to share a live version of what I personally consider the archetypal modern progrock anthem, The Ytse Jam. First, a little history: Dream Theater’s first name was Majesty, however another band with the same name threatened to sue them and they eventually switched to Dream Theater, following the suggestion of Portnoy’s father. They even went as Glasser for a short while, but thankfully the name was ditched after ten days or so. However, the Dream Theater symbol is still named Majesty. On their first album as Dream Theater, When Dream and Day Unite, they released an instrumental song that laid the foundation for what their music would eventually become. The piece was called The Ytse Jam (but most often referred to…
Tag: music
The word “progressive” carries many meanings. When talking about music, it’s the best word to get people confused, as everybody will give a different definition of it. To me, progressive music is not necessarily linked to a genre; rather, it defines the progression of a piece — no pun intended — that defies the typical “verse – chorus – verse – chorus – bridge – chorus” structure found in most popular music. Often, but this is not strictly required, there will be many time and key changes throughout the song, and the song itself can be longer, sometimes even much longer, than someone used to pop music might find acceptable. All of this inevitably relegates progressive music to a niche for connosseurs, mostly because it’s seldom music that one “understands” upon first listening to it. I mentioned genres because most people associate that to progressive rock or progressive metal, with…
One day after the release of the iPad in the United States, reviews are pouring onto American and foreign websites alike. For every person who is amazed by the device, there is someone who is bothered by the Apple buzz. To these I say: what’s the big deal?
I happen to live in the Province of the Empire, in a country I oftentimes call “the third world of technology.” No way to rent movies online – or through the mail, for that matter –, no Pandora.com or Last.fm to easily find new music (the latter is available on a paid-membership basis; the former is simply forbidden), no iBooks when the iPad comes out, and so on. I live in Italy.
I am also a happy Mac and iPhone user. Not an evangelist, not anymore at least: I will praise how durable and enjoyable Apple products are, but I won’t urge anybody to buy them. I will, however, talk about them to people who ask me. After close to ten years as a Mac user (I do remember MacOS 9.2 and MacOS X 10.0) and years of previous experience with Linux systems, Apple has become an invaluable provider of my daily computing. OS X allows me tinker with the underlying UNIX system with ease while being extremely user-friendly with the rest of the user interface. As a web developer, it’s the closest thing to perfection I can think of.
When the iPad was announced, I was following Steve Jobs’s keynote through Engadget. I gradually turned from skeptic to disappointed: what, a big iPhone? A few hours later, a friend of mine summarized such feelings as: “I was hoping for a laptop replacement, and he just announced a tray. An iTray.”
A few days later, however, an article on a blog shone light on the matter: most of us computer people probably wouldn’t have much for a device like that. I’d personally much rather use my 13-inch MacBook Pro rather than an iPad, as it’s a full-fledged computer onto which I can install any program I want, with which I can multitask and that has a physical keyboard. I do sometimes use my MBP on the sofa, and while I agree that it’s not the most perfect experience, I’m willing to trade comfort for power.
People who do not have complex computing needs, though, will love the iPad. Take my father: he inherited the last PC I used, a glorious machine based on an AMD Duron 850 MHz CPU and 512 MB of memory. It runs Windows XP, and it’s far exceeded its time. Components keep breaking, and they are becoming hard to find. Every replacement has to be second-hand, and considering the higher price compared to current parts, it’s probably best to just ditch the machine entirely and build a new one. That was the plan, until the iPad was announced.